Worthwhile, bless your spicy brains and beautiful heart.

Marvelous post, Deena.

As for the social capital issue, not to dig up a horse that's been buried, but there's one more issue there. As acknowledged previously, social capital is transient, and can be accrued and spent in a variety of ways.

But it's also -- and I think this is key -- not an absolute across the community. For example: Member A may think Super Porny Pants is fabulous, and thus when Trudy trips into the guacamole, A picks her up and hoses her off. Whereas Member B may find SPP to be a little too risque for her taste, and is just as happy when Trudy trips into the guacamole; in fact, B takes offense to Trudy's guac-ing, and asks for an apology in thread.

(Just a for-instance, Trudy, I'm absolutely making this up.)

There may in fact be social capital, but a pecking order is too defined for what we have here, and implies that there's a certain amount of power associated with high status. When in fact the only power associated with social capital is that given to you by other board members -- the willingness to be convinced, the willingness to cut you some slack on a bad day, the willingness to hear you out without taking offense.

Any single board member can negate another individual's social capital any time they like. I can log on tomorrow and decide that everything Allyson says is flame-baity and horrible. Nobody can prevent me from doing so, and all the social capital in the world can't prevent that, so long as I comply with the community standards.

I may have a gazebo, but I think everyone who looks at my gazebo sees something different. For myself, I think it's a tin-roofed shack on the edge of a swamp, and the alligators are snapping at the door.

Human beings form clusters, form communities, but the communities are flexible and fluid, changing and overlapping. The only constant is change.

As for the back-channel issue, those of us who have LJs and blogs and AIM and IRC and mailing lists don't all run in the same circles any more than those of us who live in geographic proximity see each other every week. And that's okay. Let's not propogate this concept that there's an invisible cabal of people out to run the board/community/fandom. Ain't true, and it makes me grind my teeth and invoke Snacky's Law, and no good can come from it.

just as happy when Trudy trips into the guacamole

No, we're just happy when Trudy trips naked into the guacamole.

No, we're just happy when Trudy trips naked into the guacamole.

I'm not. I hate guacamole. It is unworthy.

I don't know what Snacky's Law is but it's making me hungry.

Nutty mentioned it in Nutty "Bureaucracy 2: Like Sartre, Only Longer" Mar 30, 2004 9:28:07 pm PST

(Still catching up, determined to neither skip nor skim a single post)

[Edit: x-posted with Suela who had real knowledge. Now back to catching-up]

Wolfram, Snacky's Law, coined by our very own Snacky.

Whenever two (or more) groups of people are arguing, anywhere on the web (usenet, mailing lists, message boards, blogs, etc.), inevitably, someone on one side of the argument (regardless of age or gender) will compare the group on the other side to "those bitchy girls who made everyone's life hell in high school."

Additionally: When this happens, if the person who made this comparison is validated with tales of "just how mean the bitchy girls were to ME in high school," the argument is over, and the side making the comparison has lost.

Q: Oh yeah? You're just like the stuck-up bitches who wore Gap jeans and looked at me funny! A: Snacky's Law strikes again.

I don't know what Snacky's Law is but it's making me hungry.

I have that effect on people.

Oh, Snacky, you said that Nutty brought you here, but I had no idea you had a law coined and all. Yay you.

(OK, really stopping to natter and back to catching up)

Ah, thanks. So it's a baseless attempt at character assassination to discredit the other side's position using broad generalities and subjective factors that are, due to lack of definition and specificity, impossible to refute.

Now I'm off to find something to nibble on.